


Content in Methodology

by ERNest



Category: Drakon - A.M. Tuomala
Genre: Academia, Epistemology, Fluff, Historiography, M/M, Tea, brief mention of book purges and their aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 11:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19317124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: The manuscripts may have lost something essential of their history, but here and now it's possible for them to have a future. It's a start.





	Content in Methodology

     So many books on dragons were burned and with them the intended and actual effects of their authors. Gone are the histories both particular and regional which brought each scholar in contact with these chosen subjects, gone is the handwriting, gone the typesetting, gone the dedications and marginalia and bookmarks.

     And the resources that survived the purge before his birth are… well sparse is the term that comes to mind. Even if the person who gathered these together saw the dragons as people worthy of study, the story Kesha manages to piece together is one that assumes they are all the _same_  kind of people. Where are the debates within that group concerning the relative value of one style over another? How did the dragons themselves classify genres or analytical frameworks, and when did schisms between disciplines occur?

     Or if none of that was important and he’s still looking at everything through a primarily human lens, he wishes he knew _that_. At least the translations Starikovich unearthed for him don’t pretend to be able to force those lines into a neoclassical form. It’s a start.

     It’s plain that Misha has ideas about all of this: grammar and context and reception, but he’s letting Kesha work out what he thinks for himself, only volunteering theories when asked. While the back and forth of their meandering discussions feels like home in a way the keep at Yureyevsk never could, he also values the space to work in companionable silence. Sometimes he reaches for a cup of tea that went lukewarm ages ago and finds it steaming again, finds Misha smiling across the study at him and here, he hopes, he could be content to stay.

     And sometimes two heads gather over the same manuscript, one blond and one auburn. As their aims are slantwise from each other, they scan one source for different sorts of evidence. But that’s okay because neither is looking for what might be expected from their respective fields of study. The lawyer cares less about criminal law than treaties, while the divinity student cares not about orthodoxy but folklore.

     They work together quietly and at peace. In the early days their heads might crash together if one tried to turn the page before his fellow was ready. Now Kesha, seeing that he’ll have to wait, leans his head on Misha’s shoulder, and feels the responding smile more than he sees it. This too is a start, though of what he doesn’t know.


End file.
